A study by researchers at the University of Toronto and the Royal Ontario Museum sheds new light on a previously unclassifiable 500 million-year-old squid-like carnivore known as Nectocaris pteryx.

The new interpretation became possible with the discovery of 91 new fossils that were collected by the ROM from the famous Burgess Shale site (Yoho National Park) in the UNESCO World Heritage Canadian Rocky Mountain Parks, British Columbia over the past three decades, and examined by PhD student Martin Smith along with U of T EEB and Geology assistant professor and ROM palaeontologist Jean-Bernard Caron.

The new specimens, between two and five centimetres long, show that Nectocaris was kite-shaped and flattened from top to bottom, with large, stalked eyes and a long pair of grasping tentacles, which the researchers believe helped it to hunt for and consume prey. Smith and Caron further suggest that the creature swum using its large lateral fins, and, like modern cephalopods, probably used its nozzle-like funnel to accelerate by jet propulsion. "Some of the specimens' large gills were choked with mud, suggesting that the animals were fossilized after being caught in an underwater mud-flow," says Smith.